Our Sustainability Pledge

Our Goal

Our goal is to deliver net-zero events across our UK portfolio by 2025.

Our Plan

We have set up a sustainability working group which will focus on

1. Assessing and reducing the environmental impact of our business (Raccoon Media Group Ltd)
2. Assessing and reducing the environmental impact of our suppliers
3. Working with our exhibitors to reduce the environmental impact of their attendance at the event
4. Developing tools to support our visitors in reducing their environmental impact
5. Exploring offsetting opportunities

Roadmap and milestones

Reducing our total carbon emissions in line with the latest science to limit the planet to a 1.5 degree rise in temperature.

We will have quarterly meetings that will include representatives from marketing, operations, our sustainability lead and our CEO. Occasionally we will have other stakeholders involved as a large part of reducing our carbon footprint is done by collaboration. We cannot do this alone.

Each of the 5 areas will have quarterly and annual targets that lead into our broader goal of delivering net-zero exhibition by 2025.

Section 1 – Assessing and reducing the environmental impact of our business (Raccoon Media Group Ltd)

Annual objectives:

• By end of March 2023, we will have developed a robust and objective method of measuring our environmental impact as a business and identified ways to reduce our carbon footprint. We should have implemented at least 3 significant changes to our business that have made a noticeable impact.
• By end of March 2024, we will have tracking progress for our quarterly sustainability meetings. We will have the tools to enable us to create a company culture that puts sustainability first and a business that continually looks to measure and reduce its environmental impact.
• By end of March 2025, we will have developed a company culture where sustainability is endemic to our business with clear measurements and continuous improvements happening organically. At this point, we will have reduced our emissions as much as viably possible and will offset the rest.

Section 2 – Assessing and reducing the environmental impact of our suppliers

• By end of March 2023, we will have selected suppliers that share our commitment to sustainability and actively de-selected companies that do not. We will encourage all suppliers to consider the environmental impact of their actions, remove unnecessary or unsustainable practices and to recommend ways to reduce the carbon footprint of the event. All suppliers will be required to submit a report within 1 month of the event trading detailing their carbon impact.
• By end of March 2024, we will set a carbon target for all suppliers which they will be required to meet in order to partner with us. We will encourage insetting over offsetting and will actively seek out suppliers that have a continuous improvement programme
• By end of March 2025, our carbon impact target for our suppliers will be 0 – we will only work with suppliers that are able to deliver a net-zero event.

Section 3 – Working with our exhibitors to reduce the environmental impact of their attendance at our events

• By end of March 2023, we will create an advisory booklet and messaging scheme that encourages exhibitors to adopt a more sustainable way of exhibiting. We will restrict unsustainable exhibiting practices. We will start to gather data to enable us to measure the carbon impact of our exhibitors.
• By end of March 2024, we will look to evolve the advice further and actively feedback carbon scoring and ideas for improvement to our exhibitors based on their relative scoring. We will set an advisory threshold for exhibitors on carbon impact. We will have a more robust measurement of the environmental impact of our exhibitors’ attendance at our event
• By end of March 2025, we will seek to enforce the sustainability threshold for exhibitors and not accept bookings from companies unable to comply with this. We will have a detailed and embedded culture of sustainability amongst our exhibitors with a continuous feedback loop to help improve their carbon impact. We will be able to accurately measure and offset any remaining carbon impact.

Section 4 – Developing tools to support our visitors in reducing their environmental impact

• By end of March 2023, we will have created an advisory booklet and messaging that encourages visitors to attend sustainably.
• By end of March 2024, we will have an objective way of measuring the environmental impact of our visitors. We will dynamically serve advice on how to reduce their impact or offset it.
• By end of March 2025, visitors will be able to automatically offset their environmental impact and receive dynamically served advice on how to reduce it at point of booking. We will be able to accurately measure and offset any remaining balance.

Section 5 – Offsetting

Our plans for 2022 and 2023 are to build accurate tools to measure the environmental impact of our event across 4 sections. Our goal is to continually MEASURE and REDUCE on a quarterly basis before considering offsetting options.

By 2024 we will have been able to measure accurately across all 4 areas above and then select an offsetting partner.

Project Ownership

The sustainability working group consists of the following people:

• Mike Seaman (CEO)
• Jo Tyler (COO)
• Matt Lambert (Operations Director)
• Amy Sheridan and Hannah Warren (business team)
• Charlie Cotton (ecollective auditor)

Section leads are:

Accountability

We partnered with ecollective to help us measure and reduce our carbon footprint. Calculating your own carbon footprint can be a little complex as almost everything in our day to day lives has some sort of footprint. Our calculation system is not perfect, but it is highly accurate and allows us to see what we can improve and by calculating every element of the business we can see where to focus our attention. It will also get better with every event.

For this project, we followed the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) and applied emission factors provided by DEFRA and other data sources. To keep ourselves accountable and open to criticism, we are happy to share our methodology. Just email us or ecollective to find out more.

For questions or suggestions about our sustainability policy please contact mike@raccoonmediagroup.com